inversion_Commedia Divina_topology and ethos

(inversion) Freud uses the term ‘inversion’ to designate homosexuality, the idea being

that homosexuality is the inverse of heterosexuality. Lacan uses the term in this sense too

in his early works (Lacan, 1938:109).

However, in Lacan’s post-war works the term is used in quite a different sense.

Inversion then usually refers to a characteristic of the SPECULAR IMAGE; what appears

on one side of the real body appears on the other side of the image of the body reflected

in the mirror (see Lacan, 1951b:15). By extension, inversion becomes a quality of all

imaginary phenomena, such as TRANSITIVISM. Thus in schema L, the imaginary is

represented as a barrier blocking the discourse of the Other, causing this discourse to

arrive at the subject in an inverted form. Hence Lacan’s definition of analytic

communication in which the sender receives his own message in an inverted form.

In 1957, both senses of the term are brought together in Lacan’s discussion of

Leonardo da Vinci. Taking up Freud’s argument about Leonardo’s homosexuality (Freud,

1910c), Lacan goes on to argue that Leonardo’s specular identification was highly

unusual in that it resulted in an inversion of the positions (on schema L) of the ego and

the little other (S4, 433–4).